It has been suggested that sex differences in the processing of erotic material (e.g., memory, genital arousal, brain activation
patterns) may also be reflected by differential attention to visual cues in erotic material. To test this hypothesis, we presented
20 heterosexual men and 20 heterosexual women with erotic and non-erotic images of heterosexual couples and tracked their
eye movements during scene presentation. Results supported previous findings that erotic and non-erotic information was visually
processed in a different manner by both men and women. Men looked at opposite sex figures significantly longer than did women,
and women looked at same sex figures significantly longer than did men. Within-sex analyses suggested that men had a strong
visual attention preference for opposite sex figures as compared to same sex figures, whereas women appeared to disperse their
attention evenly between opposite and same sex figures. These differences, however, were not limited to erotic images but
evidenced in non-erotic images as well. No significant sex differences were found for attention to the contextual region of
the scenes. Results were interpreted as potentially supportive of recent studies showing a greater non-specificity of sexual
arousal in women. This interpretation assumes there is an erotic valence to images of the sex to which one orients, even when
the image is not explicitly erotic. It also assumes a relationship between visual attention and erotic valence.
Keywords Sex differences - Visual attention - Erotic stimuli